Understanding and building the capacity to deal with constant, traumatic, and transformative change.
Motivation & Vision
People working on climate action face growing psychological strain. Many are exposed to climate-related trauma, grief, moral injury and the pressure of helping communities navigate repeated disasters. At the same time, they are expected to guide profound societal transformation with little preparation for the human side of this work. Technical training alone does not equip people to lead through these challenges or the complexity intersecting global crises. These pressures weaken the climate workforce. When people become overwhelmed or feel they must leave their humanity at the door to function within technical professions, effectiveness drops and continuity suffers.
The Adaptive Mind Project (AMP) addresses this gap. AMP strengthens the psychological, relational and system-changing capacities climate professionals need to stay grounded, connected and capable of leading transformation.
The Adaptive Mind Project (AMP) is a leadership and professional development initiative that builds the human capacities climate work now demands. AMP is neither clinical, nor therapy. It helps people meet climate-related emotions and trauma with skill, restore to wholeness, and lead transformative change in their organizations and communities.
Together, we can heal, restore, and face difficulties together. We can free ourselves from old stories and systems that perpetuate the destruction and decline. We can build on our strengths, become whole and learn skills to create a future away from the existential cliff that humanity now hangs on. We can relearn how to care for and liberate ourselves and the human and natural communities that make our lives possible and rich.
We can reconnect to ourselves, to each other, to nature, to spirit, and to our deepest purpose. And do the great work needed to heal and transform our world from this place, together.
This journey of restoration, healing and transformation is lifelong, but it can begin here, now- by joining with others to build an adaptive mind and community-based resilience.
We invite you to join us if you hear the call, if you feel the need, if you sense the possibilities.
What is an adaptive mind?
We see an Adaptive Mind as a living ecology of capacities - rooted in emotion and wholeness, strengthened in community, and capable of imagining new possibilities in a climate-changed world. It is the inner resilience that allows individuals and institutions to move with disruption rather than be undone by it.
Our work nourishes three essential capacities:
Trauma & emotional capacity - tending to climate grief, anxiety, and moral injury so that people can remain steady, present, and open-hearted.
Relational & restorative capacity - repairing trust, deepening connection, and countering isolation through community, collaboration, and care.
Transformational leadership capacity - expanding imagination and systems thinking so leaders can sense emerging futures and help steward profound change..
An Adaptive Mind can help us respond with agility, creativity, hope and humility to the shocks and stresses of working in climate and related social issues. Strengthening these human capacities unlocks creativity, steadiness and the ability to deliver ambitious climate solutions even in turbulent conditions. When climate professionals have the emotional, relational and transformational skills they need, they stay in their roles longer, collaborate more effectively, and design more equitable and durable climate solutions.We have created a framework to meet people where they are, to help them rediscover their strengths, and learn new skills to build the psychosocial resilience needed to recover from burnout, process their climate emotions, heal from trauma, and navigate and facilitate the challenging transformative changes needed to build a life-sustaining and just world.
To do so, we creatively and respectfully integrate a wide variety of practices, wisdom and healing traditions, philosophies and psychologies to invite participants into deep reflection and exploration to reconnect with their innate healing capabilities, their intuitions, and the passion and love for their work and the world.
